After 10 (and a half years), Billy Joel has ended his residency at New York's Madison Square Garden (MSG) for one show a month. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Billy Joel at The Garden grossed $266.7 million and sold 1.9 million tickets across 104 shows.
Joel's residency has been a steady performance since it began in 2014. He played one show at MSG every month except for June 2017 and December 2022. The other exception was a year and a half due to COVID-19, starting in March 2020 to October 2021, plus January 2022 at the height of the first Omicron wave. All 104 shows sold out, averaging 18,604 tickets per night. Playing in the round, it outsold MSG's average, which usually scaled to 13,000-15,000 seats.
While attendance remained flat, ticket prices and revenue increased during his decade at the arena. Joel's shows in 2014 averaged $2 million per show, steadily rising to $2.5 million by 2019. After returning from the pandemic, dynamic pricing and new platinum tickets skyrocketed their earnings, from $2.7 million on average in 2022 to $3.2 million in 2023 and above. 49% to $4.7 million this year.
Joel's final MSG show topped the line overall, bringing in more than $5 million from 18,576 tickets on July 25. That's more than double the sub-$2 million gross from its opening performance on January 27, 2014.
Ultimately, Billy Joel at The Garden is the third-highest-grossing concert act in Billboard Boxscore history, surpassing U2's brief but strong run at Las Vegas' Sphere. The only artist with more money is Celine Dion. The Canadian diva's A New Day… residency ran from 2003 to 2007 at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace and grossed $385.1 million, while the follow-up, simply titled Celine, grossed $296.2 million from 2011 until 2019.
Although Joel's career predates the mid-1980s when Boxscore coverage began, there is record of him being at MSG prior to his extended residency. He played 12 shows between January and April 2006, earning $19.2 million from 226,000 tickets. More than 18,800 fans rang in Y2K with it, grossing $4.5 million as of December 31, 1999. It moved more than 100,000 tickets during a six-show run in December 1998 and before that in October 1993.
Although Joel remained loyal to MSG while in New York, he played a number of isolated stadium shows around the world, as well as co-headlining dates with Stevie Nicks and Sting.
In total, Joel has grossed $1.2 billion and sold 15.3 million tickets in 841 reported shows, dating back to 1986.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/pro/billy-joel-madison-square-garden-residency-earns-266-million-dollars/
